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Selected Projects
This project explores how pigeons can serve as a (open source) platform and interface for synthetic biology in an urban environment. By modifying the metabolism of pigeons, and specifically the bacteria that live in their gut, synthetic biology might allow us to add new functionality to what is by many seen as flying rats. This would happen through feeding the pigeons special bacteria and would be as harmless to them as eating yoghurt is to us.
The first part of this project consists of a contraption that would allow these pigeons to become part of your house, part of the architecture. This pigeon house is attached to your windowsill and allows you to feed the pigeons, separate and select them and direct them through different exits.
Further on, the project will proceed investigations into pigeon-metabolisms and attempt to create bacteria that would allow a pigeon to defecate biological soap.
Synthetic Biology's potential to make healthcare more personal and participatory might turn us into our own doctors and pharmacists; constantly monitoring and tweaking our body. It might even allow to externalise our immune system by outsourcing metabolic processes to external micro-organisms. These micro-organisms, for instance yeasts, sense and diagnose anomalies in our body to produce and deliver chemicals accordingly. Such a Synthetic Immune System would be tailored to one's genetic predisposition, age, lifestyle and therefore risk.
Only a small amount of the pharmaceuticals and chemicals we swallow are taken up in our bloodstream, most of them pass through our bodies into the city's wastewater. Since wastewater treatment plants are not designed to remove pharmaceuticals, the contents of our medicine cabinets eventually end up in the drinking water. This results in local differences in tap water, based on the food we eat and the drugs we take.
I branded tap water from three different areas: Notting Hill tapwater benefits from the highest density of organic shops, tapwater in the city of London is enhanced with various stimulants and Golders Green 'produces' a very fertile water due to the low concentration of people taking anti-conception pills.
This branded tap water was then sold on a sunny Saturday morning on Broadway market and people were asked to also put their tap water on the map, speculating it's special qualities. On the project website, people also added stories about their tap water to the map. The result is a new map of London, revealing potential local city-body ecologies or biotopes.
This is part of the 'My City = My Body' project, a design research project on how the rise of bio-technologies might influence our future interaction with the city. In this part, I created a series of public interventions to critically engage the audience in a future scenario, balancing fiction and reality.
download the big map (A0)
visit the project website on www.londonbiotopes.com
'Urban biogeography' is the study of the distribution of urban biodiversity over space and time. Maps and data of these urban biotopes might influence property prices, council tax or the cost of your health insurance. Urban biogeography enthusiasts, both amateur and professional, make use of emerging technologies to measure local city-body ecologies. One of the techniques often used is 'sewage monitoring'. This tool allows one to pump up a tiny amount of sewage into the little bottles and scan it for different pharmaceutical and chemical traces, all without even having to lift a manhole cover.
The tool uses synthetic biology* to detect oestrogen, anti-biotics, viagra or prozac: modified bacteria-solutions in the bottles change colour when detecting the chemicals or hormones. Since synthetic biology is both open-source and modular, the tool's functionality can be extended by downloading the DNA code for other detectors from a database on the internet.
This is part of the 'My City = My Body' project, a design research project on how the rise of bio-technologies might influence our future interaction with the city. In this part, I used this speculative scenario and fictional application of synthetic biology as a starting point for collaboration and confrontation with the department for Bioengineering at Imperial College in London. Many thanks to James Chappell and Vincent Rouilly at Imperial college for the bioengineering and introducing me to the wonderful world of Synthetic Biology.
In 1950, Alan Turing described what later became famous as the 'Turing test': a proposal to test a machine's intelligence. It proceeds as follows: a human judge engages in a natural language conversation with one human and one machine, each of which try to appear human; if the judge cannot reliably tell which is which, then the machine has passed the test. Since the 50's, no machine or computer has ever passed the test.
Angelina sings a version of Yesterday, created through several computer-translations. Project with Catherine Kramer and Steven Ounanian.
click 'read more' to see the film
The stewardess just told you about the oxygen mask, the life vest and the brace position. You're in an aeroplane and you believe her, you think these things will save your life. But they can't. The only thing the brace position can do for you is preserve your dental records in case of a crash. It keeps your teeth close to your seat number and makes identification easier for the forensic team. In an aeroplane, you are totally out of control.
Larry's Pillow puts you back in control. In case of an emergency, it helps you to take the brace position and straps you up securely. If you then choose to pull the tag, the pillow will inflate and suffocate you. With that choice comes control. You're in control over life and death. You are in control.
This is my MSc graduation project at the Delft University of Technology for Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum, the national museum of art and history in the Netherlands. The outcome of this 8 months research and concept design project was the creation of a new relationship between the museum and it's visitors and a concept invoking new interaction. It is presented in a book, models and a movie showing the concept in the museum.
